Will: Rep. Paul Ryan revises his 'makers' and 'takers' idea

To take the measure of this uncommonly interesting public man, begin with two related facts about him. Paul Ryan has at least 67 cousins in his Wisconsin hometown of Janesville, where there are six Ryan households within eight blocks of his home. And in his new book, “The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea,” he says something few politicians say, which is why so many are neither trusted nor respected. Ryan says he was wrong.

At a Wisconsin 4-H fair in 2012, Ryan encountered a Democrat who objected to what then was one of Ryan’s signature rhetorical tropes — his distinction between “makers” and “takers,” the latter being persons who receive more in government spending than they pay in taxes. He had been struck by a report 60 percent of Americans were already — this was before Obamacare — “net receivers.” But his encounter at the fair reminded him, for a while, he and many people he cared about had been takers, too.

The morning after a night “working the quarter pounder grill at McDonald’s,” Ryan, 16, found his father, who had been troubled by alcohol, dead in bed. Janesville’s strong sinews of community sustained Ryan and his mother; so did Social Security survivor benefits. When GM’s Janesville assembly plant closed, draining about $220 million of annual payroll from a town of 60,000, many relatives, friends and constituents needed the social safety net — unemployment compensation, job training, etc.

“At the fair that day, I realized I’d been careless with my language,” he writes. “The phrase gave insult where none was intended.” He has changed his language and his mind somewhat but thinks the fundamental things still apply.

“Society,” Ryan writes, “functions through institutions that operate in the space between the individual and the state,” and “government exists to protect the space where all of these great things occur.” Hence government has a “supporting role” as “the enabler of other institutions.”

Progressive government, however, works, sometimes inadvertently but often deliberately, to subordinate or supplant those institutions. This depletion of social capital is comprehensively injurious to the culture. And “all the tax cuts in the world don’t matter much if you don’t get the culture right.”

Progressivism aims to place individuals in unmediated dependency on a government that can proclaim, as Barack Obama does: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Meaning, people depend on government for what they are and have.

Progressivism’s founders, however, considered it essential the nation make progress, as they understood this, beyond the Founders’ natural rights philosophy, which limits government by saying (in the Declaration of Independence) it is “instituted” to “secure” these rights.

Hence Woodrow Wilson, a progressive who understood his doctrine’s premises, urged Americans to “not repeat the (Declaration’s) preface.” Progressivism preaches rights do not preexist government, they are dispensed and respected by government as it sees fit and to fit its purposes.

Since 1999, when he became its second-youngest member, Ryan has been an intellectual ornament to the House of Representatives — and a headache for risk-averse Republican Party operatives. They pay lip service to electing conservatives who will make the choices necessary to stabilize the architecture of the entitlement system and unleash the economic growth that must finance the system’s promises. But they want to let voters remain oblivious about the choices required by that architecture’s rickety condition.

Such Republicans are complicit with Obama, who demonstrated the self-destructive nature of his now-evaporating presidency by his contemptuous, and contemptible, treatment of Ryan on April 13, 2011.

After he loftily aspired to teach Washington civility, the White House invited Ryan to sit in the front row at a speech in which Obama gave an implacably hostile and mendacious depiction of Ryan’s suggestions for entitlement reforms. Obama repeated the tawdry performance in his 2010 State of the Union address, when, with Supreme Court justices in the front row of the House chamber, he castigated them for the Citizens United decision, which he misrepresented.

Both times, Obama’s behavior bespoke the insecurity of someone who, surrounded by sycophants, shuns disputations with people who can reply. Ryan, however, has replied with a book that demonstrates Obama’s wisdom in not arguing with a man who has a better mind and better manners.

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"Both times, Obama’s behavior bespoke the insecurity of someone who, surrounded by sycophants, shuns disputations with people who can reply."

This reminds me of the extended period when Geo W Bush gave no speeches before a live audience unless before a cheering section of uniformed military personnel applauding their commander-in-chief.

"Progressivism aims to place individuals in unmediated dependency on a government that can proclaim, as Barack Obama does: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Meaning, people depend on government for what they are and have."

But that is quite true. Building or maintaining a business depends on customers, employees, infrastructure, a stable government, an economy. A successful entrepeneur or CEO is a catalyst, not the whole reaction. George Will -- or whoever writes your column, you should know better.

If you operate a one-person business, making your product and selling and delivering it, you still are dependent on customers. On suppliers. On utilities. On roadways and common carriers. It's never a one-man effort.

"Makers versus takers"? Visit the local grocery store, where a significant percentage of sales is through the foodstamp program -- which incidentally was conceived and sold as a way of helping farmers. Every dime paid to welfare recipients reverberates through the economy, ending up in a lot of pockets at one time or another. That's how the economy works, stupid. There's a multiplier effect with a widespread economic benefit.

Are social security recipients makers or takers? Do you or Ryan dare touch that one with a 20 foot pole?

Are you a maker or a taker? Which is Ryan? Do you want to go there?

"Makers or takers." That is a division more clear when you are writing a column or book than when you get out into the marketplace and business world.

In the business world, there are government handouts for businesses, that are eagerly snatched up by "makers." Face it, George, we all happily feed on government and we all think of ourselves as makers and the other guy as a taker.

We are all passengers and crew on a ship. When many are hungry or sick or mutinous, it threatens everybody. Progressivism is another word for enlightened self-interest.

True. May is a taker not only in his role as owner of farmland, but in his medical practice. Statistics show that opthalmologists tend to take in more money than other medical specialties, and you know much of that comes from Medicaid and Medicare programs.

So Dr. May before he went to regurgitating John Birch Society dogma full time was on the public dole that way too, one step removed.

Info came out earlier this year listing opthalmologists and how much they took in from government programs, all on Excel spreadsheets. I intended to look for Don May's name but got sidetracked.

W5, thanks for coming by to comment. Social Security is a tontine crapshoot. Some get back a lot less than they paid in, some a lot more. Social Security is in no sense a savings account. It's more like insurance, you might come out better or you might not.

Social Security and Medicare are entitlement programs. They are not welfare, precisely, but they have some elements of welfare.

(Did you hear Ronald Reagan back in 1961 when he said Medicare would bring down America? Worth a listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bejdhs3jGyw Very similar to what was said about the ACA more recently. Far as I know Reagan did not refuse to submit claims to Medicare when he became eligible.)

The purpose of welfare programs is to see that individuals and families don't starve or freeze to death when they hit a bad spot. Welfare is temporary. Welfare exists to get recipients off welfare, and by and large that happens.

There ARE families that require welfare for a time for multiple generations. The causes of that are single women bearing children at a young age, and lack of education and self-determination. Obviously education, sex education, family planning, and access to abortion are antidotes.

There you go with that old right wing rhetoric about how long you'll have to live just to get back what you've paid in. Truth be known, payments are made on quarters paid in and the amount paid in. There's a cap on SS deductions from paychecks annually. I'll wager that anyone that has drawn a SS check for more than 5 years or so has already recouped their investment plus some......

"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." Jonathan Swift "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." Groucho Marx

SS withholding for an individual is 6.2%, so an individual earning $100K will pay $6.2K a year at today's rate. (One of the SS problems seems to be that if you make more than $114K a year (from memory), you only pay SS withholding on $114K, so if someone makes more than that, they will pay a lesser percentage compared to what they might receive.

So, if I average $100K over 30 years, and pay 6.2% to SS, I end up paying in $186K to SS.

Now, I have not a clue what someone who has paid into SS at $100K a year for the last 30 years will get from SS, but I did a SS estimator based on my meager contributions.

If I retire at 66 1/2 years of age, I will receive $1.4K per month. If I live an average life expectancy, I will receive about $160K in benefits, and I'm pretty sure I didn't put that much into SS.

Now SS benefits, as stated by others, depends upon how much, and how long an individual has been putting into SS.

My basic conclusion is that many of US paying into SS, or being the spouse or child of someone paying into SS, will receive more than we put in. Furthermore, it is much better to be making a million dollars, and then still receive full SS benefits, because they will certainly get back a lot more than they put in.

A lot of folks continue to accuse the poverty stricken for feelings of entitlement, when it is actually the wealthiest of US who feel the most entitlement.

Poor folks got to work together. A sense of entitlement comes with having excess resources.

A number of us thought -- and I am one -- that the choice of Ryan backfired for Romney. Ryan was a better choice than Palin was for McCain, but Ryan was still an extremist that cost Romney votes from middle of the road Republicans and Independents. I think if Romney had managed to find a genuine middle-of-the-road running mate with broad appeal (tall order these days in the GOP) he would have won.

Now it looks like Ryan is remaking himself to be more palatable either for his own nomination chances or as running mate for the nominee.

Geo Will missed the boat in failing to dissect Ryan's motives and the timing of this repositioning.